Shaman Changes in 3.2

That's right, Call of the Crusade is getting juicier and juicier! Must be because of the word "crusade" in it...crusade -- paladins -- awesomeness! Hmm...

Anyway, it looks like the Shamans are getting some love now. I myself have a shaman, and one of the most annoying things in the world (you can all confirm that) is dropping totems, pulling them back, dropping again, making sure none of them is dead, and if there is one, drop it again... It's a pain, brothers and sisters! Well, Blizzard has heard our cries of pain, and is about to make our lives a whole lot easier -- the totem bar awaits us in 3.2, along with spells like Call of Fire, which drops all of our totems at once, Totemic Call being renamed to Call of Earth; and two more, Call of Air and Call of Water, which work like the Fire one, just using different presets of totems.

For details and healing juiciness -- read on!

There comes a time in all shaman’s lives when they must learn to harness the power of nature and wield powerful totems. As they grow in power, so do the opportunities to use these instruments of healing, protection, and destruction. In the upcoming content patch, Call of the Crusade, the shaman will be able to quickly place totems of each element, aiding them in managing these powerful focuses of nature.

We wanted to provide some insight regarding the upcoming shaman-specific interface addition, the Totem Bar. Shaman will be able to utilize this new bar to manage their fire, earth, water, and air totems in a more accessible and convenient way. This bar will appear on the left-hand side above the standard toolbar, similar to warrior stances or druid forms. The bar contains space for four totems of the player’s choice, one of each element. Clicking the respective button will drop that totem. To the right of the four totems is a button for Totemic Call, which we have renamed Call of Earth. To the left of the four totems is a new ability named Call of Fire which will drop all four totems on the bar at once. The mana cost is the same as if the shaman dropped all four of the totems one at a time. However, it takes but a single global cooldown.

Questing shaman will be able to quickly move their totems of choice forward, while a shaman in an instance, Arena, or Battleground will be able to replace their totems if they have to move or if the totems are destroyed.

Shamans will also be able to customize their bar to set Call of Fire to drop less than four totems if they choose. Access to this functionality is made available at the same level as Call of Earth (currently level 30.) At higher levels, Shaman will gain two additional spells, Call of Air and Call of Water. These function exactly the same as Call of Fire, essentially giving the shaman three different sets of totems that can be placed at once. New key bindings will also be made available for all of these slots.

As with all new content under testing, we want to caution players that, as a new part of the interface, there may be additional changes during the period of the PTR until the release of the Call of the Crusade content patch. We look forward to constructive feedback once it is available for testing.

We have changed Healing Way to work better with HW and we have changed Improved Water Shield to also work with CH. We also dropped the cooldown of NS to 2 min so that you can HW more often. We'll try to make a post of all of the Resto changes soon.

Improved Water Shield procs will not consume Water Shield charges. The tooltip says something like "as if you had consumed an orb.

We have changed these spells for 3.2. And yes, there are some other changes. The main buff to Chain Heal is likely to come in increasing the jump distance to 10 yards and buffing the amount of healing decrease with subsequent targets to 40% down from 50%. CH, HW and LHW should all be doing bigger numbers when you consider all the talent changes.

We'll try to get the full notes out soon, but even then remember that this is a major "new tier" patch and is likely to have more iteration due to PTR feedback than the last few patches.

Comments

Comment by Varmatyr

I approve; it's been a pain to have to reset my totems every time a group moves forward 10 yards, not to mention battlegrounds and Arena.

Comment by Haxzor

on 2009/06/17 21:00:12

They buffed resto? They never buff resto

Comment by Blackboy0

on 2009/06/17 21:03:05

That picture made me LOL.

Comment by ZachUSAman

on 2009/06/17 21:15:58

oi! i already made this =(

Comment by Hordecore91

on 2009/06/18 01:21:35

Yes! finally my resto shaman can have uberfastninja heals because i wont have to waste four global cooldowns on totems :DAnd the healing buffs sounds amazing!

Comment by v3rgil

on 2009/06/18 01:47:48

the picture is full of win

Comment by Morvayn

on 2009/06/18 04:59:40

Awsome pic man.... awsome pic.

Comment by Faze101

on 2009/06/18 06:01:18

Improved Water Shield procs will not consume Water Shield charges. The tooltip says something like "as if you had consumed an orb.

Wtf... If you dont consume a water shield orb when you crit but still get the mana...492 or whatever it is, how is it even possible to go oom when CH now procs it ALSO :O

Comment by zerowashu

on 2009/06/18 06:47:07

I want something similar to wild growth for my 5 man duties.

A riptide for the group would be so cool... my only problem in 5 man runs is group wide damage... I can do four in one shot but not the fifth...

Comment by kritikal

on 2009/06/18 07:21:16

@zerowashu - roll a druid?

Honestly, I'm not too keen on how these changes read so far. It seems you no longer have to choose what to do and when to do it, nor be knowledgeable about things like how far your CH will jump to determine which healing spell to use.

Comment by EpicDragon

on 2009/06/18 08:42:07

with spells like Call of Fire, which drops all of our totems at once

Anyone else hoping this is not a typo?

Comment by faeofwind

on 2009/06/18 09:42:21

i may actually continue levelling my shaman now.

Comment by montezuma7

on 2009/06/18 10:04:08

I think the dropping all totems at once is going to be a bit op. Resto changes, hmm ok, they need more defense though not more powerful healing (resto shaman can already outheal 2 dps or more if free healing or slightly cc'd, it's when they get trained they suck), and where's the enhance love and ele tweaks? Ele is a nice niche spec but beyond its burst (which is quite counterable) it's pretty worthless, and enhance has probably the worst mobility in the entire game.

Comment by netrbrunet

on 2009/06/18 10:11:08

The names of the multi-totem-drop spells are kind of odd.Why does Call of Fire/Air/Water drop four totems, and Call of Earth pickup your totems? Doesn't seem intuitive to me.However, that being said, I'm a BIG fan of the fact that they are putting in a mechanic to drop four totems in one cd. Add the fact that you can have multiple (three as it stands) pre-sets, and you have a solid enhancement for the totems. In the end, they can call it whatever the heck they want... I'll still use it.

It will be interesting to see how the proposed CH changes and WS changes actually end up once the patch hits. If Imp WS doesn't consume an orb, and CH can also trigger it, then I'll be able to practically ignore MP5 on my gear and just stack crit. :0

So, in the end, I'll stay excited for the totems bar. But I'll wait to see how the resto spell changes unfold - don't want to get too excited about these until they are finalized.

Comment by Danten

on 2009/06/18 10:14:33

I just had a thought. The blue post doesn't seem to say how you can set your totem bars up, which leads me to believe that you need to click and drag to the bars to set it up, and change it later on.

Why not make it so you can right click on the bar to select your totem in kind of a pull-down menu. Ease of Access, if you will.

There will be 4 locations for totems, each individual location will be able to hold a single type (Fire, Water, Earth, Air)....it makes sense, does it not?

Comment by dadudeknowsall

on 2009/06/18 10:30:09

what are you talking about! shamans are so OP you shouldnt be complaining. idk if they ever have nerfed a shaman in a patch at all....

Comment by Windreaver

on 2009/06/18 10:50:37

I think the dropping all totems at once is going to be a bit op. Resto changes, hmm ok, they need more defense though not more powerful healing (resto shaman can already outheal 2 dps or more if free healing or slightly cc'd, it's when they get trained they suck), and where's the enhance love and ele tweaks? Ele is a nice niche spec but beyond its burst (which is quite counterable) it's pretty worthless, and enhance has probably the worst mobility in the entire game.

I believe they are adding a cooldown onto totems, I heard 1.5 seconds compared to the 1.0 second (times four) we see now. Not a big deal in PvE, but an extra 0.5 seconds before you can drop grounding or tremor in PvP could be an issue.

I am thinking the totems will be locked, at least by element, similar to shock spells. Probably 3 seconds to start, upto 6 seconds by 3.2.1.

Comment by Gnub

on 2009/06/18 10:50:58

what are you talking about! shamans are so OP you shouldnt be complaining. idk if they ever have nerfed a shaman in a patch at all....

... lol :)

Comment by chidugi

on 2009/06/18 11:16:42

Awww yeeeeah! Suck it totem bingo!

That means if there are multiple shammies we can just delegate the duties before and set up a call of fire set so that we don't bump heads, which is even more useful in PuGs